QC Solar Installations: 5 Illustrative Examples with Real Numbers

Five representative QC solar installations — pre-install bills, system size, cost, and post-install savings. Illustrative profiles based on typical installations we’ve done, presented anonymized until each client confirms a named case-study use.

A note on these profiles

The five cases below are composites reflecting typical installations we’ve done across QC. Actual client names, exact addresses, and identifying details are anonymized until each specific client agrees to be featured in a named case study. The system specs, pre-install bills, post-install performance, and payback periods are representative of real installations — not made up to look better than reality, and not selectively picked to be best-case.

Case 1: 3-bedroom family in Loyola Heights

Household profile: Married couple, two children, one household helper. Both parents work from home three days a week. Three bedroom aircons (inverter type), living-room aircon, standard kitchen appliances, entertainment room. Long-span metal roof, 12 years old, in good condition.

Pre-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱17,500 average, ₱21,000 peak (April–June)
System installed: 8 kWp array (16 × 500 W tier-1 monocrystalline), 6 kW hybrid inverter, 10 kWh LFP battery
Total installed cost: ₱610,000 all-in (equipment + labor + permits + Meralco NMP filing)
Post-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱1,200–2,800 (fixed charges + small net-import)
Monthly savings: ₱14,000–19,000
Simple payback: ~3.5 years
Notes: Battery covers the ~4-hour rotational brownouts common in April–June. Aircon-carry during evening peak reduces reliance on grid at highest-rate hours. Post-install monitoring shows steady 32–38 kWh daily production; consumption of 25–35 kWh during work-from-home days.

Case 2: townhouse in Fairview

Household profile: Young couple with a toddler, both working outside the home. One bedroom aircon (inverter type), living-room aircon, standard kitchen loads. No pool, no home office. Long-span metal roof, 5 years old, in excellent condition.

Pre-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱8,200 average, ₱10,500 peak
System installed: 4 kWp array (8 × 500 W tier-1 monocrystalline), 3.5 kW grid-tied inverter, no battery
Total installed cost: ₱255,000 all-in
Post-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱400–1,100
Monthly savings: ₱7,000–9,500
Simple payback: ~2.8 years
Notes: Small, simple, extremely fast payback. Grid-tied only because the client accepted rotational-brownout exposure to keep up-front cost minimal. Net-metering handles the daytime-solar-to-evening-usage mismatch cleanly since the couple is away from home during peak solar hours.

Case 3: mid-rise commercial in Cubao

Business profile: Family-owned three-story commercial building on a Cubao side street. Ground-floor retail, second-floor office space, third-floor storage. Standard commercial loads: lighting, aircon (3 window units + 2 split units), computers, refrigeration for the ground-floor sari-sari operation. Concrete flat-deck roof, 8 years old.

Pre-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱42,000 average, ₱58,000 peak
System installed: 20 kWp array (36 × 550 W bifacial on tilt racks), 20 kW commercial grid-tied inverter, no battery
Total installed cost: ₱1,180,000 all-in (including Distribution Impact Study cost)
Post-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱2,400–6,800
Monthly savings: ₱35,000–51,000
Simple payback: ~2.5 years
Notes: Bifacial made economic sense here — flat concrete roof with white-coated deck, raised tilt-mount adds meaningful bifacial gain. Business-hours load profile overlaps well with solar generation, so most kWh is self-consumed at retail rate. Meralco DIS took 8 weeks but cleared without upgrades required.

Case 4: home office in UP Village

Household profile: Solo professional running a consulting practice from a home office. One bedroom, one office room, both with inverter aircons running most of the working day. Standard kitchen and household loads. Long-span metal roof, 15 years old — repainted and repaired 2 years ago, now in good condition.

Pre-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱10,300 average, ₱12,800 peak
System installed: 5 kWp array (10 × 500 W tier-1 monocrystalline), 4 kW hybrid inverter, 5 kWh LFP battery
Total installed cost: ₱395,000 all-in
Post-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱600–1,400
Monthly savings: ₱8,900–11,400
Simple payback: ~3.8 years
Notes: Battery mostly serves the productivity-continuity role — carries the home office through Meralco outages without interrupting client calls. The 5 kWh sizing was picked specifically for critical-load (laptop, monitor, router, one aircon) 3-hour ride-through, not for whole-home overnight backup.

Case 5: WFH + battery in Culiat

Household profile: Married couple, both remote workers. Two bedrooms with aircons, one home office room with aircon, standard kitchen. Recently added a starter EV, currently charging overnight at Level-1 (standard outlet). Long-span metal roof, 3 years old.

Pre-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱14,800 average, ₱17,500 peak (before EV)
System installed: 7 kWp array (14 × 500 W tier-1 monocrystalline), 6 kW hybrid inverter, 10 kWh LFP battery
Total installed cost: ₱545,000 all-in
Post-install monthly Meralco bill: ₱1,500–3,200 (including EV charging)
Monthly savings: ₱11,600–15,600 (net of EV load added)
Simple payback: ~3.7 years
Notes: Inverter sized with headroom for adding 2 more panels when EV load grows. Battery carries the household through afternoon rotational brownouts and preserves work continuity. Overnight EV charging draws against net-metering credits accumulated during the day.

Lessons across all five

Patterns worth noting from these five cases:

Payback consistently landed in the 2.5–4 year range. This is faster than the generic “5–7 years” often quoted because these households all had meaningful daytime consumption — WFH, commercial hours, or aircon-heavy patterns that made self-consumption high.
Battery adds ~1–1.5 years to payback in exchange for outage resilience. The pure-grid-tied townhouse case (Case 2) had the fastest payback; the battery cases (1, 4, 5) had slower but still fast paybacks with the resilience benefit.
System sizing scaled with load profile, not lot size. The townhouse (small lot) had a 4 kWp array; the mid-rise commercial had 20 kWp. The determining factor was consumption, not roof area.
Grid-tied is not always the answer. Case 2 chose grid-tied for lowest cost and accepted brownout exposure. Cases 1, 4, and 5 chose hybrid because outage tolerance was low. Both were the right call for the specific household.
Bifacial made sense once, in the commercial flat-roof case. The four residential cases used monofacial monocrystalline. There is no generic “upgrade to bifacial” story that fits residential.
All five had post-install monthly bills at or under ₱7,000. Solar does not eliminate the Meralco bill entirely — fixed charges, small residual imports, and net-metering settlement lag mean most systems settle at 5–15% of the pre-install bill, not zero.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these numbers cherry-picked?

No — they are representative of the middle band of installations we’ve done, not the best-case installations. Some clients have hit even faster paybacks (2 years) because of exceptional load-profile alignment; some have hit slower paybacks (5+ years) because of unusual circumstances (heavy shading, oversized initial spec, or later shifts in usage). The five cases here reflect what typical clients actually experience.

Why aren’t there client names or photos?

Because named client cases require written consent from each client, and we prefer to under-promise on that consent process rather than pressure clients to give it. We publish anonymized profiles as a baseline; when specific clients agree to be featured with names, photos, and the exact street address, we run separate long-form case studies.

Can I see one of these installations in person?

For clients considering signing, we can often arrange a walk-through of a completed installation of a similar size and roof type in your subdivision. Ask during the initial site assessment. Some existing clients enjoy showing off the array; others prefer privacy — we respect the preference.

Related guides

Ready to compare against these numbers?

Send us your Meralco bill and household profile. We will map you to the closest case here and quote what your equivalent installation looks like — with the honest tradeoffs each of these households made. See our residential solar service →